Hysteron Proteron Research Articles

Hysteron Proteron in Biblical Hebrew and Syriac Peshitta (A comparative linguistic study)

Hysteron Proteron in Biblical Hebrew and Syriac Peshitta (A comparative linguistic study)

صور من أساليب التقديم والتأخير في كتاب نهج البلاغة: دراسة بلاغية

The research aims at analyzing the style of Imam Ali in the “Hysteron Proteron”, and the style was dealt in three ways as follows: - 1) Idiomatic hysteron proteron. 2) Grammatical hysteron proteron 3) Non-idiomatic hysteron. And the finally a summary of the research, and also the results with reference to comments were mentioned in the conclusion. Most of critics are on the view that, the Arabic language is characterized by other languages by features that are not found in other languages, such as flexibility in leaving freedom to the speaker to speak what he wants in his speech. But this is only done through clear and well-known rules, and in spite that, there are cases in which Hysteron is bidden, and for that reason the scholars of grammar and rhetoric began to talk about the term “Hysteron”. When stylistics appeared at the beginning of twentieth century, stylist prepared themselves to search for Hysteron proteron in the studies of deviational manner. The method used is descriptive analytical approach that seeks to describe, analyze and reveal the places of Hysteron Proteron and select them in term of analysis, and it is concluded during the study that, Imam Ali has reached the climax of skill in the Hysteron proteron.

Volunt or Volant? Ancients and Moderns on a Variant Reading of Verg. Aen. 1.150

Volunt or Volant?Ancients and Moderns on a Variant Reading of Verg. Aen. 1.150* Javier Uría An intriguing scholium In the first book of the Aeneid, when describing Neptune's intervention for calming the sea storm that the wind gods had raised at Juno's request, Virgil uses the simile (the first one in the Aeneid)1 of a rebel mob, eager at first to grab any throwable object to use as a weapon, but then calming at the sight of a great statesman capable of placating their spirits with his words: ac ueluti magno in populo cum saepe coorta estseditio saeuitque animis ignobile uulgusiamque faces et saxa uolant (furor arma ministrat);tum, pietate grauem ac meritis si forte uirum quemconspexere, silent arrectis auribus astant (Verg. Aen. 1.148–52) And as a revolt often takes place in a vast crowdand the ignoble populace is enraged,and immediately torches and rocks fly (fury provides weapons);then, if they see a man of piety and virtue,they fall silent and stand to listen attentively.2 Forse la soluzione esiste ed io non l'ho ben capita ('Maybe the solution does exist and I have not understood it properly'). These are the modest closing words in Timpanaro's second attempt3 to make sense of a remark referring to that Virgilian passage in the scholia of Servius Danielis (henceforth DServius) on [End Page 222] Virgil.4 The scholium reports a criticism by the first-century ce Stoic philosopher and grammarian Annaeus Cornutus.5 It reads as follows: iamqve faces et saxa volant. multi non 'uolant', sed 'uolunt' inuenisse se dicunt. sed Cornutus uerendum ait ne praeposterum sit 'faces uelle', et sic 'saxa', cum alibi maturius et ex ordine dictum sit 'arma uelit poscatque simul rapiatque iuuentus.' (Verg. Aen. 7.340, Scholia Danielis Aen. 1.150). iamqve faces et saxa volant. 'Soon torches and stones are flying.' Many critics say that they have not found uolant, 'they fly', but uolunt, 'they want', but Cornutus states that one should be worried that faces uelle 'wanting torches' (and also saxa, 'stones') is a reversed order, since in another passage it was said more opportunely and in order arma uelit poscatque simul rapiatque iuuentus, 'let the young men want, demand and take up arms at once.' Other scholars have paid attention to the scholium both earlier and later than Timpanaro. This paper offers, first, a critical review of attempts to explain the text and then puts forward a new, and hopefully definitive, interpretation. A review of proposed interpretations In a very brief remark in his Prolegomena, Ribbeck6 states that Cornutus was right in rejecting the reading uolunt that the anonymous multi had proposed instead of uolant. In so doing, the German scholar assumes that Cornutus' pointing at an inverted order (praeposterum, i.e. hysteron proteron) in Aen. 1.150 is part of that critic's argument to condemn uolunt. However, as explained below, this is neither a necessary nor a universally accepted inference. Ribbeck's approach seems to be shared by Reppe,7 who refers to this [End Page 223] scholium as the only one, among Cornutus' fragments, reflecting a vindication of the tradita lectio.8 The assumption that Cornutus objected to uolunt and chose the correct reading uolant has led Zetzel9 to praise his 'good judgment' in contrast with his opponent's (Zetzel's guess is that the unmentioned opponent may be Iulius Hyginus,10 who might have cited from 'a nonexistent manuscript'). However, the certainty that Cornutus defended uolant is challenged by Timpanaro,11 who rightly emphasises that the uelit in the parallel passage (Aen. 7.340) rather implies that Cornutus was actually supporting uolunt. Timpanaro admits, however, that this does not provide a definite solution either, since it seems to mean that Cornutus was arguing against himself; indeed, he appears to be trying to defend uolunt and, at the same time, to be acknowledging that, with uolunt, the verse falls into a praeposterum. In one of her 'Two Servian Notes', Lazzarini12 tries to minimise the apparent contradiction in Cornutus' argument by noting that the two passages from the Aeneid that Cornutus compares are, in...

The Unfolding of Language as Hysteron Proteron: Heterochrony and Extended Connectivity

In this paper it is championed that a two stages hypothesis for the evolution of language must take into account a qualified approach to heterochrony and the available information from the archaeological record. As it seems, a protracted childhood and youth was already at work in Homo erectus, but early postnatal brain growth (usually called secondary altriciality) was only available to Homo sapiens. According to these facts, the term hysteron proteron is given here to the reversal that sets off linguistic capacity during the first three years of life, upon the ancient abilities for social, natural and technological knowledge, which were already established during the last 2 Mya BP. The unfolding of linguistic capacity creates the typical effect that ontogeny reverses phylogeny: since late postnatal brain growth, quite recent in evolution, launches in ontogeny before the phylogenetically old processes of playing and learning take place during childhood and youth. Full symbolic abilities may be explained as emerging from older semiotic competences based on iconicity (figuration) and indexicality (metonymy), which would have presumably sustained human life for millennia. Furthermore, it is argued that the formation of linguistic categories follows from that overlaying of extended connectivity linked to early postnatal brain growth, inasmuch as it entangles and transforms previous iconic and referential information: i.e. the ancient semiotic capacities for proprioception, embodiment, extended mimesis and pragmatic knowledge, shaping a sort of self-organization process that provides the formal and semantic properties we find in articulated languages.

Good Grammar, Possessive Pronouns, and Preposterous Possessions in The Taming of the Shrew

With their focus on Bianca's Latinate lessons in act 3 of The Taming of the Shrew, scholars have long overlooked the play's indebtedness to a vernacular English grammar. Drawing attention to such vernacular "characters" as possessive pronouns, shrews, hysteron proteron, and other preposterous rhetorical figures, this essay considers new possibilities for reading The Taming of the Shrew, Shakespeare's representations of this vernacular grammar, and the purpose and message of Katherine's final speech. The essay considers what it means that, in both early modern England and in The Taming of the Shrew, English takes precedence over Latin; that possessive pronouns become keys to interpreting lessons in an English grammar; and that pronouns, even in their proper places, become sites of "preposterous possession." Strategically employing possessive pronouns in her final speech, Katherine, the shrew of this play who is (supposedly) tamed, enacts some preposterous possessions of her own. Through a close reading of a wide range of early modern texts alongside The Taming of the Shrew, the essay navigates a variety of contexts in order to reveal their continuities, rather than thinking about them as mutually exclusive. Such contextualizations illuminate and culminate in a reading of Katherine's final speech, which demonstrates how her grammar disrupts and overturns grammatical and gendered orders and allows her (and Shakespeare, too) to shape and imagine a new order of things. Indeed, Katherine embodies a burgeoning English vernacular, and as such, she is a figure through which Shakespeare explores that vernacular's critical moment, thereby reflecting Shakespeare's understanding of and participation in a changing educational landscape of early modern England.

Further Textual Issues in the Aeneid(2. 749; 5. 300; 9. 539)

The line A. 2. 749, deemed superfluous in its context by Peerlkamp and Ribbeck, is not to be reconciled with Vergil's approach to the so-called hysteron proteron. II) 5. 300: The author discusses a couple of the readings of the ms. p as a prelude to his recommendation of its reading Panopeus (instead of Panopes or Panospes) as the name of a Sicilian participant in Vergil's foot-race. III) On the basis of Vergil's use of resido the author finds Johannes Schrader's conjecture recedunt instead of residunt at 9. 539 necessary, indeed overdue.

Commenting on Vergil's hysteron proteron

The author presents a sizable sample of examples (40) that have been labelled hysteron proteron (h.p.) by commentators on Vergil, in order to discuss the criteria underlying the use of the term and - not less importantly - to analyse how this alleged h.p. functions in its context. The interpretations offered will try to grasp the individual variations and not least to examine how the examples are embedded in their context. A basic tenet is that tense, mode and aspect must be taken into due account. Very few, if any, of the author's examples should in his view be treated as true cases of h.p. in future commentaries.

Don DeLillo, 9/11 and the Remains of Fresh Kills

Don DeLillo, 9/11 and the Remains of Fresh Kills

Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender (review)

Reviewed by: Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender Joel Christensen Elizabeth Minchin. Homeric Voices: Discourse, Memory, Gender. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Pp. xii, 310. $99.00. ISBN 978-0-19-928012-4. In this book, Elizabeth Minchin continues to apply lessons from cognitive psychology and sociolinguistics to Homeric poetry; see, for example, Homer and the Resources of Memory: Some Applications of Cognitive Theory to the Iliad and the Odyssey (Oxford 2001). Her emphasis here, however, turns to character-speech, a category that has not received the attention it deserves. Minchin offers ten studies that pursue the dual goals of gauging to what extent Homeric speech reflects patterns developed by modern sociolinguists and of proposing that such patterns echo the everyday speech of Homeric poets and their audiences. The book is divided into two parts. The first (“Discourse and Memory”) addresses Homeric speech acts including the rebuke, declining an invitation, and questions. The second, “Discourse and Gender,” investigates speech differentiation by gender. In the introduction, Minchin concisely surveys her theoretical underpinnings (specifically speech-acts, discourse analysis, and cognitive psychology). Chapter 1, providing a nice typology of rebukes in Homer, closes with the argument that such speech-acts are tied to implicit memory and are thus unconsciously known formats’ for generic language. This claim, by grounding Homeric speech in the present of the performance, may help to elucidate the relationship between the poetic tradition and the moment of composition. Such arguments might be strengthened with a nod to performance theory or receptionalism. In chapter 2, Minchin presents the declining of an invitation as a speech-act that indicates the effect of politeness on Homeric speech. Although a similar effort has recently been made, Minchin’s more global treatment is welcome; see H. Paul Brown TAPA 136 (2006) 1–46. The pattern she develops, for example, provides a more nuanced view of Achilles’ aggressive response to Priam’s dinner refusal in Iliad 24. In chapter 3, Minchin examines questions-and-answers to point up differences between the stylization of Homeric speech and everyday language. Whereas everyday language rarely yields neat pairs of questions and answers, Homeric poetry does this as a matter of course—a rule Minchin identifies as a compositional strategy. Chapter 4 investigates question strings and hysteron proteron in answers (where respondents reverse the order of their interlocutor’s questions) famously discussed by Samuel Bassett, HSCP 31 (1920) 39–62. Bassett argues that this device developed for the ease of the audience; Minchin proposes that it derives from everyday conversation: as speakers we exhibit a natural linguistic preference from contiguity of thought. In the final chapter of part 1, Minchin emphasizes the competitive nature of Homeric speech by focusing on character choice of question types. Her application of sociolinguistic data underscores the rigidly hierarchical structure of the society presented by Homer. [End Page 196] In part 2, Minchin addresses speech differentiation by gender. As Minchin admits, the results are mixed. This, however, is not a great surprise—the statistical sample of female character-speech, in the Iliad especially, is quite small. Further complications not specifically addressed by Minchin include the problem of goddesses and the gendered identity of the poet/narrator. Goddesses are certainly feminine, but is it entirely fair to put them in the same speaking category as an Andromache? Epic poetics, moreover, are male-dominated and thus may present obstacles for equating Homeric female language with a real-world equivalent. Chapter 6 surveys patterns of rebukes and protests to illustrate that in the Iliad most of these speech-acts reflect the power and status relationship between the speaker and addressee, while their distribution in the Odyssey reveals a breakdown of social status norms. Chapters 7–9 present three interconnected studies on competitive and cooperative speech strategies. In the first survey of information-questions (questions that can amount to a coercive display of status), Minchin argues that masculine/feminine use of speech adheres to expectations from modern sociolinguistics with the notable exception of figures and situations that fall outside of the competitive status system of speech—such as the elderly Priam with Helen. There are some aspects of her approach that deserve further attention. While few would doubt the connection...

DUE PROBLEMI DI EPICA ARCAICA COMUNI A PRASSIFANE E AD ARISTARCO

The paper considers two sources, where Praxiphanes and Aristarchus are quoted together about the same grammatical topics on Hesiod and Homer: (A) PROCLUS, Commentaria in Hesiodi Opera, PERTUSI, Proleg. Ac, 2.7-20 and (B) P.Oxy. 1086.11-18. The first text deals with the problem of the prologue of Hesiodus' Erga, which both grammarians obelized as spurious; the second with their interpretation of hysteron proteron in Iliad and Odyssea. An emendation to text A is proposed, as well as two new integrations of lines 12 and 17 of text B. Praxiphanes appears to have been in Thespies (Beotia), where he might have been looking for Hesiodic documents, have found a manuscript without the prologue and have got a honorary citizenship (cfr. IG VII 1752.6-7, with the probable name of his eldest son included in a military list of ephebes); he might also be the authority of Proclus' other two claims against the authenticity of the first 10 verses of the Erga. Aristarchus presumably took his judgment into account. The quotation of Praxiphanes by Aristarchus in the papyrus of the 1st century B.C. seems to be due to his analysis of the double hysteron proteron in Od. 11.170-203. Aristarchus recalled it commenting the first real case in Iliad 2.763, with the purpose to show the same stylistic use in both the poems (homeric συνnθe?α). Praxiphanes, in a different way, studied the double hysteron proteron in Od. 11.170-203 according to the poetic principle of prepon.

Muqdam u-Meʿuḥar and Muqaddam wa-Muʿaḫḫar: On the History of Some Hebrew and Arabic Terms for Hysteron Proteron and Anastrophe

The Judeo-Arabic commentaries of R. Saadia Gaon (882–942) and his successors contain a number of exegetical terms that were used earlier by quranic exegetes, for example, haqiqah wa-majaz “expressions that are literally true and expressions used with literary license,” muhkam wa-mutasabih “univocal and ambiguous,” and muqaddam wamuaahhar “hysteron proteron.”1 Some of these terms also have Hebrew analogs. Hebrew has an opposition between aemet and masal (lit., “truth” and “parable”) that is rare in the Talmud but becomes more prominent in the Islamic period as an equivalent of the haqiqahmajaz dichotomy.2 Hebrew also has a term muqdam u-meauhar that, like Arabic muqaddam wa-muaahhar, refers to inverted order. M. Zucker has argued that the Hebrew term is a borrowing of the Arabic one: “The use of this exegetical principle is found already in tannaitic and amoraic literature, but their term is serus. . . . The term min ha-muqdam weha-meauhar is found only in sources of the Arabic period. . . .”3 At first glance, Zucker’s argument seems plausible. Arabic exegetical and grammatical terminology was imported into Hebrew by Karaite exegetes at an early period. This can be seen in an early list of Hebrew exegetical terms from the Cairo Genizah.4 An example of

The Schemata λέξεωσ: A Grammatical and Rhetorical Tool

Abstract This article is divided in two parts. In the first, αλλοίωσισ is considered as a figure which in poetry corresponds with solecism in prose just as metaplasm corresponds with barbarism, and the group of figures which is ranged around αλλοίωσισ such as hysteron proteron, hyperbaton, hypallagé is studied. Since αλλοίωσισ means not only a particular figure, but also a group of figures, it is a matter of stylistic tools employed as tags in a more or less mechanical way to achieve special effects. Among Latin grammarians and rhetoricians, hyperbaton became a sort of general trope used to indicate a change in word order. In the second part of the article, some examples ofr hyperbaton are examined, particularly Epistulae 1,20,25 me primis urbis belli placuisse domique to show how the poet has made of this a double reference, making a discreet allusion to his military service in the army of Brutus as well as his friendship with Maecenas and Augustus.

Semina ignis : The Interplay of Science and Myth in the Song of Silenus

Semina Ignis:The Interplay of Science and Myth in the Song of Silenus Michael Paschalis 1. Introduction hinc lapides Pyrrhae iactos, Saturnia regna,Caucasiasque refert uolucris furtumque Promethei (Virg. Ecl. 6.41-42) The list of myths in Virgil's Eclogues 6.41-42 has intrigued critics since the time of Servius. The problem most commonly pointed out is its lack of chronological and logical order vis-à-vis the mainstream mythological tradition. Virgil does not mention the first creation of man but passes directly to his regeneration from Pyrrha's stones. This is the story of the repopulation of the earth after the Flood and hence ought to have preceded Saturn's reign, which presumably represents man's initial happy state. In addition, Prometheus' punishment comes before his theft of fire; this could indeed be interpreted as a hysteron proteron, but there remains the difficulty that Prometheus is Deucalion's father and Pyrrha's uncle1 and his furtum ought to have preceded Pyrrha's creation of mankind. The majority of critics believe that there is indeed a lack of chronological order and that it is deliberate. I will give a few examples. Zeph Stewart claims that the chronological problem is explicable in terms of Virgil's intention to give random examples of one branch of didactic poetry associated with the name of Hesiod, that is, genealogical and mythological tales of the origin and early history of mankind.2 According to Eleanor Leach the displacement of chronology aims at puzzling readers and causing them to seek an explanation. She furthermore makes the [End Page 201] important observation that these myths "may even seem contradictory for they are not all commonly found in the same accounts" and proceeds to explain that "they provide three distinct ideas of the nature of mankind."3 Charles Segal thinks that behind the deliberate chronological disorder, there is a theme which is central for the song of Silenus, namely "the flawed character of human existence and man's removal from any absolute purity of life or spirit."4 Other critics, however, see no chronological problem in the order of myths. Boyle and Clausen, for instance, note a progression from the creation of mankind (the myth of Pyrrha) to the golden age (Saturn's reign) and from there to the age of technology (Prometheus' theft of fire), which they interpret either as mankind's fall from a happy state or as morally indifferent.5 Patricia Johnston has argued that the relation of men generated from stones to the Saturnia regna conforms to a consistent chronological pattern in Virgil's works and to an overall conception of the Golden Age, which in her view "appears to require that it be preceded by a race of mortals hardened either by primitive existence or by military activities."6 In what follows I intend to suggest a somewhat different approach to the passage in question. The interpretation I propose is based on arguments derived from the close relation of these myths to the preceding "scientific" section. The two sections share thematic and semantic features which, as I show in part 4 of this essay, are also prominent in other parts of Eclogue 6. In an article published in 1923 Günther Jachmann7 made two points which are important for any discussion of Virgil's cosmogony and the section on Pyrrha and Prometheus: 1. Jachmann objected to Servius' observation that line 41 begins a new section ("relictis prudentibus rebus de mundi origine, subito ad fabulas transitum fecit"), which the majority of Virgilian scholars have adopted without giving it much thought. He pointed out that the initial cosmogony forms a thematic whole with the section treating the origin (Pyrrha) and early history of man (Saturn's reign and the theft of fire by Prometheus). Jachmann noted in this respect that a similar pattern is visible in Orpheus' song in Apollonius (Arg. 1.496-511.), one of the models of Virgil's cosmogony. The difference is that Orpheus' cosmogony [End Page 202] is followed by a theogony and focuses on the gods (503-11), while Silenus' cosmogony is followed by an anthropogony and focuses on man, approximately as Ovid, Metamorphoses 1.76-150...

How Homeric is Hysteron Proteron?

It is now eighty years?we go back to a time which precedes the work of Milman Parry?since Samuel Bassett's article on hysteron proteron in Homer brought to readers' notice a remarkable device, an idiosyncracy of the poet's style.1) The term, generally speaking, refers to the poet's preference for spelling out within his song a twofold instruction, proposal, or question and in a subsequent passage reversing the original order of presentation. Bassett examines the occurrence of hysteron proteron in one particular context, which he identified in the spoken discourse of both the Iliad and the Odyssey. On the basis of his observations of response patterns in Homer, Bassett had concluded that when more than two questions are asked within the same speaking turn in the Homeric text, there are three possible arrangements of answers: the order of questions may be retained, or varied, or reversed.2) The first arrangement, according to Bassett, is the 'most natural'.3) He cites as an example the replies which Mentes-Athene makes to Telemachos' questioning at Od. 1.180-194. At 1.170-177, Telemachos has asked the following questions: (1) who are you? (170); (2) where is your city? (170); (3) in what ship did you come? (171); (4) how did you happen to be sailing near Ithaca? (171-172); (5) who are your crew? (172); (6) are you a guest-friend of my father? (175-177). Mentes-Athena replies in almost the exact order of the six questions asked: (1) Mentes (180-181); (2) I rule the Taphians (181); (3) my own (182); (4) I am

Jargon

Jargon Jonathan Crewe (bio) At long last, the tide seems to be turning against ugly, jargon-ridden criticism in the academy. Complaints about impenetrable, theoretically inspired gobbledygook have been heard for many years from public intellectuals writing in journals ranging from the New Criterion through the New Yorker; what is new is a wave of revulsion in the academy itself. Writing in The New York Times (27 February 1999), Dinitia Smith observes that attacks on bad writing, “replete with bloated jargon,” are now coming from all sides. Edward Said has begun his term as president of the MLA with a stinging attack on English departments for “fostering incomprehensible writing.” Smith notes that the bad writing competition regularly conducted by the journal Philosophy and Literature has gained the amused attention of an ever-increasing readership; recent prize-winners have included the philosopher turned queer-feminist cultural critic Judith Butler, darling of the American theory establishment. Also targeting Butler as a particularly egregious example, Susan Gubar and Martha Nussbaum have added their voices to the growing chorus of protest. Having made known her disgust at “the thick soup of [Butler’s] prose,” Nussbaum continues: Some precincts of the continental philosophical tradition . . . have an unfortunate tendency to regard the philosopher as a star who fascinates, and frequently by obscurity . . . the thinker is heeded only for his or her turgid charisma. (New Republic, 22 February 1999) General impatience with jargon is often coupled with disgust at the critical -isms whose adherents have spawned their own jargons while depreciating the literature they purport to study: to name only some, feminism, Marxism, deconstructionism, Freudianism, cultural materialism, new historicism. The employment of special jargons has abetted the special-interest politicization of criticism, to a point where literary studies resemble an endless Balkan war fought with high-tech weapons. Yet Harold Bloom’s recent Shakespeare: The Invention of the Human is more than just an impassioned protest against this state of affairs; it promises to turn things around in Shakespeare studies at least. Bravo, Harold! Jargon is both a cause and symptom of the transformation of literary criticism from a discipline in its own right, practiced by gracious writers, into an outlandish hybrid of philosophy, social science, psychology, anthropology, geography, and religion. Moreover, much of the now-fashionable critical jargon is borrowed from foreign languages and disciplines, rendering English critical prose opaque, ungraceful, and intimidatingly pretentious. Happily, however, the present moment seems more auspicious than any in recent times for a concerted effort to rid literary study of all [End Page 1] encumbering jargon. Both books and the pleasure of reading await rediscovery after having been lost, for so many years, to so many potential readers. Let us start the general decontamination by first assembling some of the most pernicious foreign jargon for disposal. Having done that, let us then identify some of the primary sources of critical pollution. Rebarbative terms often encountered in criticism include simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy, chiasmus, catachresis, bathos, pathos, hyperbole, hamartia, peripeteia, anagnorisis, catastrophe, allegory, symbol. Why, as George Orwell asked long ago, must we import Greek and Latin terms when plain English ones will do? Why have we failed to adopt the English poetic terms coined in the same spirit by George Puttenham as long ago as 1589? 1 But wait, it gets worse: ellipsis, zeugma, metalepsis, apostrophe, hyperbaton, hysteron proteron, onomatopoeia, asyndeton, paronomasia, epithet, litotes, meiosis, anaphora, antistrophe, aporia, prosopopeia. And more outlandish still: clinamen, tessera, apophrades, simploche, antanaclasis, exargasia, cacosyntheton, hypotiposis, epidiastole. So much, you might think, for the “art of poetry,” but there’s always another layer of jargon waiting to be peeled away: caesura, pentameter, heptameter, iamb, dactyl, spondee, trochee, distich, hemistich, stanza, sestina, canzone, sonnet, epigraph, epigram, eclogue, elegy, tragedy, comedy. How is the common English reader served by any of this pretentious verbiage—why not just say, for example, “sad play” or “happy play”? How is the poet Spenser served when his intrusive contemporary E.K., a proto-theorist if ever there was one, responds thus to a line in his “January” eclogue: “A pretty epanorthosis . . . withal a paronomasia?” Or when E.K. refers to a figure of speech in “February” as: “a certain Icon or...

物語の順序と初期の聖書注解

Muqdam (u) Meuhar is a technique of rabbinic interpretation, which suggests the reversal of the textual order as a solution to exegetical difficulties. The technique was first attested to as an exegetical principle in the Mishnah of Rabbi Eliezer, and later, was used by medieval grammarians, such as Jonah Ibn Janah, Solomon Parchon, and David Kimhi, to resolve syntactical, lexical difficulties of the biblical text.A noteworthy development was, however, that the technique was originally perceived in the Mishnah of R. Eliezer as a solution to problems in the chronological order of biblical narratives. Furthermore, the term, Muqdam Meuhar, was not really attested in Tannaitic and Amoraic sources, despite the fact that the sages frequently discussed among themselves on problems in the order of text.To explain the uniqueness of this exegetical tradition, the present paper will compare the technique of Muqdam Meuhar with the practice of Hysteron Proteron- a similar rule of Roman literary critics-as found in Servius' commentary on Virgil's Aeneid, regarding that Muqdam Meuhar was the rabbinic calque of Hysteron Proteron. In particular, the paper will focus on controversial aspects of the technique as applied to chronological problems in the order of the biblical narratives.

Hysteron Proteron, or ‘Woman First’

The term 'Hysteron Proteron' comes to us from classical rhetoric. It refers to a figure of speech, a trope, in which two terms are reversed according to the sequence, the order, temporal, spatial, causal, in which you ordinarily find them. It is a term of language that deliberately places the cart before the horse. Typical examples include precisely the cart before the horse. Another example often cited in dictionaries is the phrase, thunder and lightning. Everyone knows that lightning comes first in the natural sequence. But no-one ever says lightning and thunder. More broadly the religious teaching that the last should be first and the first should be last is itself a hysteron proteron. and finally, or if you prefer, first and foremost, there is Wordsworth's and Freud's dictum that the child is father of the man, from which springs all that is truly modern, to my thinking, in literature and in psychoanalysis. The least then to be said of hysteron proteron is that it is a very rich trope indeed. Let me add that a hysteron proteron is more than a metalepsis. Metalepsis simply means reversal, though the two are effectively the same in their logic. It is more than a metalepsis because it not only mentions the reversal, leaping across or back, but enacts it rather like an oxymoron. It puts last, i.e. hysteron, first and it puts the first, i.e. proteron, last. Were these remarks to abide by that rigorous logic, the title of the paper would serve as the text and the text of the paper would serve as the title. Now I should like to continue with some preliminary remarks as well on the first of our two terms, the hysteron. In the matter of Freud, as we all know, our word hysteria comes from the Greek word for womb. Granted that this is so, I am struck by the fact that we never hear about the etymology within Greek of the Greek word for womb. We do

The Lack of Song in Love's Labor's Lost

an object; Shakespeare says, Consum'd with that which. In addition, signification of impresa corresponds to innuendoes of third quatrain of Sonnet 73. To reader of Shakespeare's day who was acquainted with store of iconological literature which both revealed and concealed, aged or ruined condition of lover is metaphoric and symbolic. Only in third quatrain and couplet does causal relationship between lady and lover's condition become apparent. The couplet, This thou perceiv'st, which makes thy love more strong / To love that well which thou must leave ere long, reminds reader that sonnet is essentially a begging missive; it also suggests a kind of hysteron proteron in which effects (the lover's ruin) are described in quatrains and cause (the lady) is cited in couplet. In critical third quatrain Shakespeare juxtaposes youth and age, the glowing of such fire / That on ashes of his youth doth lie. Following sonnet tradition, he symbolizes love and passion through an image of fire; however, paradoxical predicament of lover in third quatrain is best explained by Daniel's commentary on impresa of down-turned torch. Shakespeare is not simply talking about age but also Alluding to a Lady, whose beautie did foster his [her faithful lover's] loue, and whose disdayne did endamage his life. The hortatory nature of couplet, pleading for a change in cause (the lady) and thereby a change in effects (the lover's condition), supports this symbolic interpretation. The sonnet, therefore, is symbol as well as metaphor, and Daniel's commentary on torch which nourishes and consumes is a probable source for critical third quatrain and informs structure and meaning of Sonnet 73. In this sonnet, as in Act I, scene ii of Pericles, Shakespeare owes a debt to his contemporary, Samuel Daniel.